Professor Richard Toye, Head of History at the University of Exeter, said Theresa May’s decision to call a snap election was ‘a blunder of historic proportions’:
“This is not merely a setback or a reversal; it is the result of a blunder of historic proportions. At the outset of the campaign, it looked as though the Prime Minister could not lose the election if she tried. But for much of it, it looked as though that was exactly what she was attempting to do,” Professor Toye of the University of Exeter said. “Going to the country was a significant unforced error. Snap elections are inherently risky, as Stanley Baldwin discovered in 1923 and Edward Heath found out in 1974. But both of these Tory leaders at least had credible reasons for acting as they did. Give the British people an election they don’t want and they will often use it as an opportunity to give you a good kicking.”
Professor Michelle Ryan, University of Exeter, says Theresa May is casualty of the ‘glass cliff’ phenomenon: the tendency for women to be preferred over men for precarious jobs:
“While the snap election was of her own making, this short tenure is perhaps not surprising given what we know about the glass cliff – the tendency for women to occupy leadership positions in times of crisis. It is no coincidence that May became Prime Minister amidst the uncertainty of Brexit, and she is now paying the price.”
Professor Ryan is Professor of Social and Organisational Psychology at the University of Exeter. She and colleague Prof Alex Haslam adopted the term “glass cliff” to describe a situation where a woman ascends to a leadership position in which the risk of failure is high – a glass cliff from which she might fall. “Glass Cliff” was shortlisted for the Oxford Dictionaries ‘word of the year’ in 2016.
